Mr. Theodore Hickman here, at your service!
Now that the formalities are out the way, welcome to by blog, simply named Ted Hickman after yours truly…and please, call me Ted!
My story
Funny story – my middle name is actually TED, which I guess works out great since Ted is indeed what they affectionately call Theodore, for short, so I guess my parent’s sense of humour is one which is deeply rooted in practicality as well. I’m not complaining at all and if I’m to get a little bit spiritual, for lack of a better word, I reckon it’s this practicality ingrained in my very name which has gone on to shape my destiny in choosing a life path that aims to simplify things as much as possible, not least of which is the world of business and entrepreneurship.
I followed what can probably be referred to as the conventional route into the business world, having first started out in the corporate world after acing it in academia. No, I didn’t do business studies directly, but rather majored in accounting, so I’ve always been a number’s guy, through-and-through, after which time at college I got drafted straight into a position by my bursar.
Things took off like you wouldn’t believe, because after only a single month, two of my superiors up the line both left their positions within a very short space of time and no sooner than I’d gotten my first promotion was I promoted again! All was well, because I’d already started dreading just crunching numbers and with the double-promotion I was now in charge of overseeing the company I’d been working for’s business development division.
Basically that just meant less number-crunching (actually none at all) and more rainmaking, which as I’d go on to learn is just one notch away from where I truly belonged – business process management…
To make a long story just a little shorter, a rather bizarre series of events ensued in which all the employees, stakeholders and anyone involved in the company suddenly realised a major pay-day, having all been given some stock options in a spin-off business they’d been developing! Myself and the two understudies who subsequently filled up the positions I’d gone through and left vacant and I were the only ones who weren’t in on this big payday, well because we were the newest members of staff and hadn’t been part of those dealings which ensued prior to our arrival.
No matter, because every last member of the company, including the cleaning and security staff quit their jobs and the management and ownership basically handed over the entire business to the three of us, headed up by yours truly, of course!
The subsequent evolution
So instead of hiring staff to fill out all the positions, what we rather decided to do was run what’s left of the business as some kind of consultancy, which I must say has worked out well for us – so well in fact that I decided to only get involved at the level of a silent owner.
That’s how this blog was born, because I wanted to still wake up in the morning and fill up my day with some challenges that are of the business world, otherwise I feel it’s a bit too early to retire. So instead of flying to all corners of the world and perhaps creating another one of the many travel blogs that are in existence, I decided to create a platform over which I can help other people who are seeking to make some success of their forays into the world of business and entrepreneurship.
What to expect at TedHickMan.com
TedHickman.com is a place where you can come to get the best in practical business advice, mostly contributed by yours truly, but the content will most definitely be sourced from many different places. It won’t just be a matter of me talking about things that I have experienced myself, because I believe that only really covers half of what it takes to make a success out the business world. Mine was largely just a success story, but in between the general successful trajectory were many, many failures which I reckon make for a far better teacher than the success milestones.